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Renan Barao defeats Urijah Faber at UFC 169

Scott Mitchell, QMI Agency

Saturday, February 1, 2014
11:13:06 MST PM

Jamie Varner (right) fights Abel Trujillo during UFC 169 on Saturday night at the Prudential Center in New Jersey. Trujillo floored Varner with a right hand to kick off the main card. (Joe Camporeale/USA Today Sports)

Renan Barao and Jose Aldo followed in Anderson Silva's footsteps to the top.

The pair of Brazilians did not follow in their countryman's recent fall from grace, as Barao and Aldo both defended their belts Saturday night at UFC 169 in Newark, N.J.

Barao wasted no time in taking out Urijah Faber to keep his bantamweight title, while Aldo didn't waste any movement in an economical victory over Ricardo Lamas to defend the featherweight belt for a sixth straight time.

Approaching the three-minute mark of the first round in the main event, Barao caught the 34-year-old Faber with a straight right hand, stunning the California Kid.

Faber regrouped, but Barao, 26, connected with an overhand left, sending Faber to the canvas, and, at the same time, referee Herb Dean scurrying to stop the fight.

“I trained very hard for this fight,” Barao said through an interpreter, after the first-round TKO. “I left my hometown and left my family and my comfort zone, so I trained very hard and always wanted to move forward and look for that knockout.”

The 26-year-old Barao (32-1) hasn't lost since his first professional fight at 18 years of age, and has now beaten Faber twice, convincingly, in the last two years.

The stoppage was questionable.

“Herb is a great referee, I just wish I had more of a chance.

“I gave him a thumbs up, unless I was dreaming. I thought I had more fight in me.”

Aldo continued the run of title defences, outlasting Lamas in the co-main event.

After feeling each other out in the first round, Aldo started to counter with his patented right-leg kick, which started to wear Lamas, a Chicago native, down through the next three rounds.

It was a typical Aldo Muay Thai clinic, as the Brazilian was happy to use a left-hook-right-kick combo to control the fight.

Late in the fight, Lamas was able to mount the champion and put together one last offensive attack in hopes of catching Aldo in the waning moments, but to no avail.

Aldo claimed a unanimous-decision win, and hasn't lost since 2005.

“He took a lot of kicks on the leg and I was surprised he kept going,” Aldo said through an interpreter.

When Alistair Overeem appeared on the UFC scene two years ago and destroyed Brock Lesnar, it appeared the sky was the limit for the English-born, Dutch-trained fighter.

But after two straight losses in which he was leading fights against Antonio Silva and Travis Browne, Overeem was at a crossroads heading in the final fight before the pair of title bouts.

On the other side, heavyweight Frank Mir was in the same boat.

While UFC president Dana White stopped short of saying the loser would be sent packing, there was no questioning the boss' assessment that both fighters needed to perform.

Less than two minutes into the first round, Overeem caught Mir with a vicious knee, but couldn't finish off the former UFC heavyweight champ.

Over the next two rounds, Mir couldn't control Overeem on the ground, and the former K-1 champ landed more than 110 ground strikes to earn a unanimous decision win over the battered and bloodied Mir.

“I heard Brock Lesnar's going to come back to the UFC. Well, I'll be here waiting for him,” Overeem said, after the fight.

John Lineker wasted no time in showing off his power against Ali Bagautinov, spending much of the second round lining devastating body shots to the Russian's mid-section.

After the two fighters were content stalking and striking through the first two rounds, Lineker, the Brazilian flyweight, opened the final round attempting to continue that pace, but was quickly taken to the canvas by Bagautinov, who controlled the final minutes of the bout for the unanimous-decision win.

It wasn't a great start, as a smattering of boos followed a preliminary card that saw every single bout — seven fights in total — go the distance.

But Abel Trujillo and Jamie Varner changed all that in a hurry.

Midway through the second round of the first main card bout, the two fighters squared off in the middle of the octagon, trading blows, before Trujillo landed a right-hand bomb flush to Varner's jaw, which sent the veteran to the canvas face first in what was perhaps his last chance to reestablish himself in the UFC's lightweight division.

“I'm a killer and you gotta kill me in here,” Trujillo said of the scintillating exchange.